The vBird is a product of the RFID Hackerscamp 2008. It's a bird and likes to fly but it cannot on its own; Picnic attendees can help it on its way, and it will shout with glee when it gets to fly. Vbird also likes to meet new people so letting multiple people give him some flight-time adds to his joy. He likes to make friends with all the people he meets - using the IK-tag formally introduces you to him.Enlarge

The vBird has a psychic connection to the Picnic network. Through this connection, it shares everything it sees, and every move it feels. When you touch its heart with your RFID tag, it recognizes you, and shares with you what happened right after you touched it. It also shares with you its positive experiences, and lets you know who else shared in this experience. In the picnic network you can thus see it's flight path from person to person through some amazing shots.Enlarge

The vBird project wished to build upon the successful www.jubilator.org by poly-xelor. The vBird's heart has two parts: a camera with a wireless transmitter and a bluetooth Arduino with a serial RFID reader, a Lilypad accelerometer, and some leds. The former streams the flight to the vBird's nest, the latter is used to identify the thrower and receiver of the vBird (by the RFID reader and the tags of the throwers). The accelerometer detects if the vBird is being thrown, flying, or being catched; an appropriate sound is then send out through the speakers in the nest ('nice to meet you', 'wheeeeee'). The leds are used as the eyes. At first, we wanted to also connect a little mp3 player to the Arduino but it quickly burnt down.Enlarge

The nest was a big tower consisting of three televisions. The top one displayed a live stream of the vBird's flights. The two screens at the side showed a beautiful interface with who connected to whom.

Unfortunately the vBird did not live very long as it had a weak heart. Everything broke and got resoldered until our wireless transmitter broke down. R.I.P. vBird. We hope to give you a wireless transmitter transplant soon.Enlarge